Strike of the Mountain Man

Book 40: Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

Malcolm Theodore Puddle is a 21-year shipping clerk - from way back East. What is he doing out here?

The Mountain Man's former neighbor, Humbolt Puddle, has died and left his crumbling 600-acre ranch to his only living heir, just as a greedy and ruthless cattle baron is circling the Humbolt ranch like a ravenous vulture. Poor, unsuspecting Puddle is walking into a death trap.

Smoke is the not the pitying kind. But any enemy of Smoke's neighbor is his enemy, too: kill-crazy hired gunmen are threatening the whole valley, and good men are dying. Puddle may not be much, but he's all Smoke has - as a take-no-prisoners mountain man and a timid tinhorn make for an army of two...in one hell of a fight.

Release date: October 24, 2011

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

Deekus Templeton had once ridden with Frank and Jesse James. It wasn’t particularly a matter of pride for him, especially since the James brothers were well known figures . . . even idolized in some places, while few had ever heard of Deekus Templeton.

What bothered Templeton the most was that he was the one who had planned the train robbery in Muncie, Kansas, where they got $30,000. That was the biggest haul from any train robbery the James gang made, and it was Frank and Jesse who were celebrated, not the one who planned it. Shortly after that, Templeton decided to go into business for himself.

He had learned that the Red Cliff Special would be carrying a money transfer of $50,000 from a bank in Pueblo, Colorado to the bank in Big Rock, Colorado, which was more than any job the James brothers had ever pulled. To stop the train, he had piled wood and brush onto the track.

“The train’s acomin’, Deekus!” one of his men shouted.

“Torch the pile,” Templeton called, and a moment later a rather substantial fire flamed up from the pile of brushwood.

Smoke Jensen had gone to Denver with Pearlie and Cal to set up a plant that would ship beef, already butchered and processed, in refrigerated cars to markets in the East. Handling already processed meat was much cheaper than shipping live cattle, and the result was a greater profit to the rancher.

Smoke built the plant, not only for himself, but also for other cattlemen in Colorado as well as in Wyoming. He had left Pearlie and Cal in Denver to see to the final details, and was on the way back home, changing trains in Pueblo so he could take the Red Cliff Special on its overnight run. He would be arriving in Big Rock at six o’clock in the morning.

There were no sleeper cars on the train so Smoke was napping as best he could in the seat. The train had been under way for five hours when it came to a sudden, shuddering, screeching, and banging halt, stopping so abruptly it awakened Smoke with a start. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew it certainly wasn’t a normal stop. He looked through the window to see where they were, but the lanterns that lit the inside of the car cast reflections on the windows, making it difficult to see through them, and into the dark outside.

“Why did we stop?” someone asked.

“Did we hit something? I was thrown so, that I nearly broke my neck,” a man complained.

Though he couldn’t see anything through the windows, Smoke could hear voices outside, rough and guttural, and he had a feeling the train was being robbed. He pulled his pistol and held it down in his lap.

“Everyone stay in their seats!” a man shouted, bursting into the car from the front. He was wearing a hood over his face, and he held a pistol pointed toward the passengers in the car.

“What is the meaning of this?” a man shouted indignantly. He started to get up, but the gunman moved quickly toward him and brought his pistol down sharply over the man’s head. The passenger groaned and fell back. A woman who had been sitting with him cried out in alarm.

“Anybody else?” the gunman challenged. “Maybe you folks didn’t hear me when I said everyone stay in their seats.”

Another gunman came in to join the first. “What happened?”

“Nothing I can’t handle. Is everything under control out there?”

“Yeah, ever’thing is fine. Just keep ever’one in here covered.” The second gunman left the car.

The remaining train robber took off his hat. “Now folks, this is what I’m goin’ to do. I’m goin’ to walk down this aisle and hold my hat out.” He chuckled. “You know, sort of like what they do in church. But I don’t just want a coin or two like you do when you’re in church. I want ever’thing you have. And if I see any of you holdin’ out on me, why, I’ll have to shoot you.”

The gunman started down the aisle making his collection, and though the first few people cooperated, when he got to a young woman holding a baby, she protested.

“Please, this is all the money I have. I’m taking it to my husband so we can buy a house.”

“I said, don’t nobody hold back,” the gunman said menacingly. “Now you just empty that bag of your’n into my hat.”

“Leave the lady alone,” Smoke said.

The train robber looked over at Smoke. “Mister, this here is a train robbery. Maybe you don’t understand how train robberies work. You see, I take the money, and people like you give the money. So you might as well get your money out, ’cause soon as I get the money from the little mama here, why I’ll be takin’ yours.”

“If you want to live, put the hat down now so the people can get their money back, and leave this car,” Smoke said.

“If I want to live?” The gunman’s laugh was a high-pitched cackle. “Mister, I’m the one holdin’ the gun here. Or ain’t you noticed?”

“Leave this car now, or die,” Smoke said calmly.

“I’ve had about enough of you, mister.” Pointing his pistol at Smoke, the train robber pulled the hammer back. That was as far he got before, in a lightning move, Smoke brought his own pistol up from his lap and pulled the trigger. Dropping his gun, the robber clutched his chest, and staggered back a few steps. “What the hell?” he asked in a pained voice.

One of the other train robbers jumped onto the train. Seeing his partner down, and an armed man standing, he fired at Smoke. His shot went wide and the bullet smashed through the window beside Smoke’s seat, sending out a stinging spray of glass but doing no other damage. Smoke brought his own pistol around and squeezed off a second shot. The robber staggered back, hit the front wall of the car, then slid down to the floor in a seated position, already dead.

“What’s going on in there?” Deekus Templeton shouted from outside the train.

One of the other men looked into the car, then jerked his head back. “Clay and Dooley are both shot dead!” he called. “I’m gettin’ out of here!”

“You can’t leave, McClain! We ain’t got the money yet!” Templeton shouted.

“Get it yourself! There’s only the two of us left!”

McClain started to ride away but Templeton raised his pistol and shot him off the horse.

“Now there’s only one of us,” he said as he rode hard to get away.

When the train reached Big Rock the next morning the bodies of the three would-be train robbers were laid out on the depot platform. Each one had his arms folded across his chest. The hoods had been removed, and all three had their eyes open. A dozen or more citizens of the town were standing there looking down at the bodies.

Sheriff Carson was there as well, and he was talking to Smoke. “You say you only got two of them?”

“Yes, these two,” Smoke said, pointing to the two men he shot.

“Yeah, that’s Clay Brandon and Dooley Waters,” Sheriff Carson said, pointing to the two men Smoke had shot. “The other one is Len McClain. If you didn’t shoot him, who did?”

“There were four of them. It was the fourth one who shot this man.”

“I don’t suppose you heard his name called out,” Sheriff Carson said. It was more of a wishful declaration than a question.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, the bank will certainly be thanking you. There was a fifty thousand dollar shipment on that train.”

“That’s funny,” Smoke said. “If there was that much money in the shipment, why were they bothering with trying to steal the few dollars they could get from the passengers?”

One of the men in the crowd of onlookers was Deekus Templeton. He had already learned that Smoke Jensen was the man who had foiled his robbery attempt and stood behind the others, watching Jensen and the sheriff as they were engaged in conversation. He had heard of Smoke Jensen. Who in that part of the country had not heard of him? But it was the first time he had ever seen him, and he wanted to get a good look at the man. He didn’t want to ever blunder into some foolish mistake as had Clay and Dooley.

Templeton smiled as he realized he had an advantage. He knew what Smoke Jensen looked like, but Jensen didn’t know what he looked like.

Then he heard Jensen ask the same question that had been puzzling him. Why were they bothering with trying to steal the few dollars they could get from the passengers?

Phil Clinton, the publisher and editor of the Big Rock Journal had heard about the attempted train robbery and came down to the depot with paper and pen to interview the passengers. He also brought a camera with him, set up a tripod, then took a photograph of the three dead men. A good newspaperman, Clinton knew a picture would supplement the story, and he employed a very good woodcut artist who could make that happen.

His article appeared in the Big Rock Journal.

Pierre Mouchette was a French Army Officer and an 1869 graduate from St. Cyr, the leading military academy of France. After St. Cyr, he’d entered Saumur, France’s premier cavalry school, and after leaving Saumur, he’d taken part in the Franco-Prussian War. It was there that he encountered the American general Phil Sheridan who was in France to observe the war. Sheridan had told him of the American West, and though it had no immediate bearing on Mouchette’s military career, he remembered it later when, after his third duel, he was told he had gone as high as he was going to go in the French military.

In January of 1879, orders were cut appointing Capitaine Pierre Mouchette as disbursement officer. These orders called for him to transfer two and one half million francs from Paris to the army finance office in Dijon. Mouchette made very careful plans, selecting as his assistant a sergeant who was approximately his same build. They picked up the money in Paris, then went by train to Dijon.

In Dijon, they mounted horses and started toward the division headquarters. When they were but a mile out of town, Mouchette turned off the road.

“Capitaine Mouchette, where are you going?” Sergeant Dubois asked. “The headquarters is this way.” He pointed down the road.

“This is a shorter way,” Mouchette said.

“Shorter? How can it be shorter? This road goes straight to the headquarters.”

“Would you argue with an officer, Sergeant?” Mouchette scolded.

“Non, mon capitaine.”

“Then this is the direction we will go.”

“Oui, mon capitaine.”

The sergeant followed Mouchette dutifully until they were deep into a wooded area. “Capitaine Mouchette, forgive me, but we are now some distance from headquarters. I think we should turn back.”

Mouchette turned toward the sergeant. “Do you?” he asked with a humorless smile on his face.

It was then Sergeant Dubois saw Mouchette holding a pistol leveled toward him. “Capitaine, what are you doing?” Dubois shouted in fear.

Mouchette pulled the trigger, and the bullet struck Dubois between the eyes.

Working quickly, Mouchette removed his uniform and put on the civilian clothes he had previously packed in his saddlebags. Then, stripping Dubois of his uniform, he replaced it with his own. “There now, Sergeant, you have just been promoted to capitaine. I salute you, Capitaine Mouchette.”

It was not by chance Mouchette had chosen that particular spot, for earlier he had hidden a can of kerosene in the bushes. He poured kerosene on Dubois’ face and set a match to it, keeping the fire going until all the sergeant’s features were burned away and only a blackened skull remained. After that, he put his billfold in the pocket of the uniform Sergeant Dubois was now wearing. In it, were Mouchette’s identity papers, the orders appointing him as disbursement officer, his membership card to the officers’ mess, and a letter he had recently received from a military clothier in Paris, quoting the price of a new dress uniform.

With his deception completed, Mouchette crossed the border into Switzerland and journeyed to Geneva. There, he presented himself to the bank as a French businessman. “I shall be going to North America shortly to invest in a business opportunity in New York and I should like to change some French currency into American dollars. What is the current exchange rate?”

“It is five francs for one dollar,” the teller said. “How much do you wish to exchange?”

“Two and one half million francs.”

The teller made no reaction to the large sum. He picked up a pencil and began figuring the amount.

“Your amount comes to four hundred eighty-seven thousand dollars. That sum is, of course, less the twelve thousand five hundred dollar conversion fee.”

“Very good.”

The teller counted out the American dollars. “Do you care to recount it, Monsieur?”

“No, I’m sure it is all there.”

“Then if you would sign this certificate, please?”

Mouchette signed it as Antoine Dubois.

It was as Pierre Mouchette that he devised the plan to steal the payroll. It was as Antoine Dubois that he exchanged the francs for U.S. dollars. And it was as Colonel the Marquis Lucien Garneau that he boarded a ship in Hamburg, Germany, bound for New York. Lucien Garneau was how he would be known.

Garneau got off the ship in New York and immediately bought a local newspaper. He saw an article that caught his interest.

Garneau smiled as he realized everything had worked out exactly as he had intended. He went directly from Castle Garden, his point of entry, to Grand Central depot to continue his plan, recalling a conversation he’d had with General Sheridan, when the American general had talked about Colorado. He’d told how beautiful the mountains were, but what had most interested Garneau about Colorado was Sheridan’s off-hand comment. “A person could go into the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and, if he wanted to, just drop off the face of the earth.”

Finding a map of Colorado, Lucien Garneau put his finger on the chart with no particular destination in mind. The closest town to the tip of his finger was Big Rock, in Eagle County, so he bought a ticket for that destination and boarded the train.

Inspector Andre Laurent of the French Military Police was shown into General Moreau’s office.

“Colonel Durand said you had information for me,” General Moreau said.

“I do, my General,” Laurent said. “The body we found was not that of Capitaine Mouchette.”

“What? But the body was wearing Mouchette’s uniform. His billfold was found with the body.”

“Those were plants, to make us believe it was Mouchette’s body.”

“Who would do that?”

“I believe Mouchette himself did it,” Laurent said. “The body was that of Sergeant Antoine Dubois.”

“Dubois?”

“I believe Mouchette murdered Dubois, stole the money, then made it appear as if Dubois was the guilty party. He burned Dubois’ face so he could not be identified.”

“Then how was he identified?”

“The body was missing two toes on its left foot. It is well known by Sergeant Dubois’s friends that he lost two toes in the war. Mouchette had no such wound.”

“Then Mouchette is guilty of murder and theft of the money.”

“Yes, my General.”

General Moreau drummed his fingers on his desk. “Inspector Laurent, you have full authorization to go after Mouchette. Find him, wherever he is, and bring him to justice for France.”

Inspector Laurent saluted General Moreau. “That will be my pleasure, General.”

On August first, the day that three years earlier, Colorado had become a state, the entire town of Big Rock was turned out to celebrate Statehood Day. There were food booths, horse and foot races, horseshoe throwing competitions, shooting matches, and of course, music and dancing.

Smoke hadn’t entered any of the shooting contests because he had been asked to judge. In the match for rifle marksmanship, Humboldt Puddle and Dwayne Booker had survived all the others and were the last two shooters remaining. Each had just put three shots into the bull’s eye, after having moved the targets to the far end of the street.

“What are we going to do now, Smoke?” Sheriff Carson asked. “If we move the targets any farther, they are going to be in another county.”

Those close enough to hear the sheriff laughed.

Smoke took out a silver dollar, then set it up on top of the bale of hay being used as a backstop for the target. Standing it on its edge, he pushed enough of the coin into the hay to keep it erect. The result was that just over half the coin was showing. “Let them shoot at this.”

Despite the fact that many other things were going on to attract the people of the town and county, word of the intense shooting competition had spread, and hundreds were drawn up to watch the final two shooters. They flipped a coin to see who would shoot first, and Dwayne Booker was selected.

The crowd grew very quiet as Booker raised the Winchester .44-40 to his shoulder, sighted down the barrel, then pulled the trigger. A few stems of hay fluttered up right beside the coin, but the coin wasn’t hit.

“It’s a miss,” Smoke said, looking through a pair of binoculars.

It was Humboldt’s turn. He looked down range at the target, which was at least one hundred yards away. After staring at it for a long moment, he raised the rifle and fired, almost in the same fluid motion.

Smoke didn’t have to look through the binoculars, nor did he have to make the announcement. The cheers of at least four hundred people made the announcement for him. The coin flew away from the top of the hay bale, the result of a direct hit.

Humboldt’s feat of marksmanship was still the talk of the town as everyone gathered for the dance held in the commodious dining room of the Dunn Hotel. Sally dragged Smoke out on the floor to form the first square. Sheriff Carson stood in front of the band, calling the steps through a megaphone he held to his mouth.

“It’s too bad Pearlie and Cal aren’t here,” Sally said. “They so enjoy these things.”

“No doubt Denver is also celebrating Statehood Day,” Smoke said. “And I expect they are doing just fine.”

Cal had entered a pie-eating contest and it was down to three contestants. The other two contestants had a combined weight of nearly six hundred pounds, compared to Cal’s weight of one hundred seventy-five pounds.

The three remaining contestants had been given a five-minute break before the contest was to resume, and Cal and Pearlie were back in one corner of the room, talking quietly.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” Cal said. “I’m stuffed.”

“You’re stuffed?” Pearlie said. “This is pie we’re talkin’ about, Cal. In all the time I’ve known you, I’ve never known you to pass up a piece of pie.”

“This isn’t a piece of pie, Pearlie, it’s a whole pie. And I’ve already eaten three.”

“Then what’s one more? Here, let me rub your stomach, that’ll move some of what you’ve already eaten aside and give you a little more room.”

“All right, gentlemen, the time is up,” the judge called. “Please return to the table.”

Initially, there had been several tables, but the final three contestants were moved to one round table and seated across from each other. A pie was put in front of each of them.

“All right, gentlemen, you may commence,” the judge said.

One of the heavy contestants stared at the pie for just a moment, then without so much as touching it, he stood up and walked away. That left only two people.

The two began eating their pie. Cal called out to the judge and pointed to the pie the big man had left behind on the table. “Hey judge, since he’s not going to eat that pie, can I have it when I finish this one?”

The spectators who were gathered around the table laughed and exclaimed in amazement. “There’s no bottom in that man’s stomach!”

When Cal asked fo. . .